”Giving Back The Stage” Project – Presenting Venessa Ninovic

This has been a project I have wanted to do for a long time. As a woman in the security industry, I have had the pleasure and the honor to have worked alongside some amazing female professionals from different parts of the world and security fields. Personally, I have been blessed with my networking contacts, developments, and public exposure. I feel like I owe a lot of my brand’s success to my relationship with my network and other colleagues.

That is why I have decided to “Give Back the Stage” to a different woman every month. Women don’t tend to be very public about their stories, their achievements, and their struggles. So every month, I will be using the power of my networking platforms and connections to promote and bring awareness to a specific female in the security sector. My goal is to help them grow their own brands, connections, and publicity by showing their stories and sharing them with my network and contacts. I learned a long time ago that success comes not only from hard work, dedication, and keeping my standards up, but also from having the right connections. And what these connections taught me is that sometimes by simply asking, you will be given an answer, some much-needed help, a tip, a new introduction, and sometimes, even a job offer.

Please join me in this effort and welcome these women, invite them to your professional network and reach out to them if their services align with what your organization or clients may need. If you know a woman who must be on this “Stage”, please reach out to me and send me a recommendation.

The woman to whom I am giving the Stage for this month is? Venessa Ninovic . Her LinkedIn profile came to my attention through her educational posts and articles, which I have been following for quite some time. Seeing how well-skilled she is in the OSINT sector, I invited Venessa to co-write an article with me, which she gladly did. During this process and our communication, I got to know more about her, her professional background, and her willingness to share her knowledge with others and help new practitioners.

Venessa is an Intelligence Analyst from Sydney Australia, who works in the law enforcement industry, a field that she truly loves. When she’s not doing work, she is contributing to the intelligence community in multiple ways. This led to her being awarded the AIPIO Emerging Intelligence Professional of the Year in 2022. She publishes blogs (@intel_inquirer on Medium) to share knowledge and give back to her field. She covers unique topics in the open-source intelligence (OSINT) space like deepfakes, dating apps, and drones. She also presented at the?SANS OSINT?Summit early this year to a worldwide audience about the impacts of deepfakes and how to detect them.

Recently she was a guest blogger on OSINT Curious, discussing the significance Strava can pose for OSINT, and wrote a joint article with me about the?Job Scams in the Security Industry. She has also been featured in podcasts, including the Layer8 Podcast talking about dating app investigations, and the SitRep podcast discussing potential issues deepfake satellites may cause for analysts. Knowing how difficult it can be for job hunters, Venessa mentored a university student who was studying criminology and has also provided career advice for those wanting to enter the intelligence field on the Justice Dialogue. Sharing the importance of OPSEC and privacy online, she also presented to university graduates providing tools and tips for listeners.

For those of you in the security industry who want to learn more about the fascinating world of OSINT, you can follow Venessa’s articles on?Medium?and?Linkedin.